A Chronic Infection
by devilberry
Summary: "Bakura leans even closer, and Malik swears that he will fucking freak out if he's about to be kissed against a supermarket shelf while everyone he's ever hated is within a 30 foot distance, half dead, and completely vulnerable." Two evil little boys try to survive in post-apocalyptic Domino City. Zombie AU.


_At one point or another in my life, I have taken a blood oath to write a Zombie AU for every fandom that I'm in. Here is Yu-Gi-Oh's._

_ Hope you enjoy~_

_Dedicated, of course, to Adele/neverbirds. Because this was basically all her idea and I wickedly stole it. Also I wrote this whilst lying in bed next to her and watching her sleep. __You wish I was joking about that._

_Also, devilberry previously went by the harlequin demon Just in case you were wondering._

* * *

Bakura is probably having too much fun as he stomps a steel toed boot into the eyesocket of some little old man.

A decaying hand grabs at his blue striped shirt, staining it with dirt and blood and disease. Bakura grins, letting a crowbar meet the base of the motherfucker's skull. _Smash, smash, smash, _and red is flying everywhere, staining almost every strand of that soft white hair.

The motorcycle is parked among the decimated remains of Domino City, and Malik leans heavily on it while a cigarette hangs from the edge of his lips. He's got a shotgun close at hand and he's smiling heavily into the smoke. "Well," he says, completely deadpan, as he sucks in hot breaths of toxin, "this is fun."

Bakura laughs, listening to the bones snapping under his feet. "You could say that."

Malik nods though he knows Bakura is too engrossed in the spasming form beneath him that's stopped spasming to see it. He sucks in more poison, looking out at the skyline in front of him. It's cold and empty and decrepit. Everyone smart has gone and left, leaving only him and Bakura to prowl the city. Ryou's probably in here somewhere too, quiet and small and afraid at the base of Bakura's skull.

Finally realizing that the undead thing beneath him is now dead again, Bakura stands. He kicks at the thing's head with the tip of his slimy black boot. "Hey," he says, not even looking at Malik, "Can I have a smoke?"

Malik fiddles with his jacket pocket, blindly searching for their new favorite bad habit, and removes the pack and to throw in his companion's general direction. Bakura bends over to pick it up, and he lights himself a cigarette. The chemicals surround him and he joins Malik by the motorcycle.

He looks a fucking sight, soaked to the bone in blood and guts. Malik sometimes thinks on how exactly Bakura deals with this whole Zombie Apocalypse thing, because he must have some sort of warped sympathy for something that used to be dead but half isn't anymore. He can't help but wonder what the difference is between Bakura and the twitching bodies beneath his shoes. He supposes that it's the mindless thirst for human flesh, but he fingers a purple patch of skin at the base of his bronze throat, remembering nothing but teeth, and just wonders.

This is Bakura in his natural habitat. Drenched in blood and nursing a fuming stick of chemicals and bathing in the chaos.

(He was just raised that way.)

It's been like this for months now. All they do is drive around on Malik's motorcycle and kill and steal. It's an ideal life, in a way. They get to do whatever the fuck they please now, and that is such a liberating feeling. Everyone has died out or pissed off long long ago, and it's just better this way. They don't have to directly deal with any inane human weaklings anymore. Now they can just end them with a headshot.

Though Malik did have to get used to Bakura smelling like graveyard all of the time. And he's had to learn how to violently scrub stomach acid out of clothing. And sometimes when they kiss it tastes a little bit too much like teeth and a lot too much like blood.

This isn't perfect, but it'll do.

Malik tongues at the cigarette on his lips. "So, where were we? Going to the store, right?"

"Yes," Bakura answers, getting on the back of the motorcycle while Malik neatly folds himself into the driver's seat. "We need more cigarettes and tea. And possibly actual food of sustenance. Possibly."

"Sounds fair enough." And Malik is turning the ignition, letting the motorbike roar to life. He flicks the used up butt to the street, and watches the lit up ash skip across the pavement in a mad scarlet fury. They do their best to avoid anymore legions of the undead on the short trip to the store.

Bakura hangs off the back of the motorcycle like a madman. His white hair is flowing wickedly in the wind and the bloodstains on his shirt are drying to a dead sort of brown. He takes deep drags and lets the smoke fester in Ryou's lungs before exhaling it to pollute the city. He's got an arm around Malik's waist in a way that's far too tight but it also feels as though he could fall off the edge of the bike and tumble into a decayed oblivion at any second.

They park not-so neatly in front of the shop. It's empty and rotting and smells like dead meat. Just like everything else in this fucking town.

"Right," Malik says, peeling himself off the motorcycle. "Cigarettes. Tea. Sustenance."

"Bullets, too, if they have any."

"We _just_ picked up bullets the other day."

"I go through them fast."

Malik sighs, because he should really just expect this now. They have nothing better to do than create destruction and survive and fuck. They've both got enough vices for this whole empty world, and it's not _really _Bakura's fault that he enjoys slaughtering dozens of people on a daily basis so much.

"Alright." he sighs out in reply, stepping through the broken glass that once made up a door to the supermarket. He doesn't remember who shattered the glass in the first place, but it was probably him or Bakura or some sad fuck who's probably already long dead.

Bakura follows quickly behind, and it just _figures_ that about half a dozen little monsters are right there, all crowded around the butcher's section, working their way through decomposed bits of raw hamburger. They're crouched over the cooler, shovelling hunks of meat into their mouths, trying to feed that unending hunger. Malik can relate to that, in a way, but then he realizes that's a really fucked up thing to think, so he shakes the idea from his head.

He turns to Bakura, tilting his head and crinkling his eyes in a way that says, _what do we do?_

Bakura frowns and scrunches his nose, _we kick the shit out of them and bathe in their blood._

Malik's lips form a straight line, _oh of course._

Bakura's (Ryou's) bonewhite fingers tighten possessively around his crowbar, and he descends on the animals with their slurping noises and sharp teeth and dead skin, and what _is _the difference between Bakura and a zombie anyway?

He stops with a sudden force midstep. You would think the monsters would be able to smell him coming from a mile away—with how he's all blood and cigarettes and soft gooey white flesh—but they're too engrossed in their midday meal of maggots and meat to notice.

"Oh," Bakura says with a wicked sort of glee. "_Oh."_

And because Malik is exactly the right sort of idiot, he follows behind to where Bakura's stood in the middle of the diseased supermarket. He cranes his neck to see what exactly it was that caught the thief's attention, and finds himself looking at nothing other than the twitching little beasts. There's nothing particularly admirable about them, just a few boys and girls feasting on slimy bits of molded over dead animals. Malik's about to ask Bakura what the fuck is wrong with him, when he sees a familiar head of spiky tricolored hair.

"_Oh!"_ is his response.

Bakura looks him dead in the eyes and nods savagely. He seems to be looking more wild and wicked by the minute, and Malik doesn't know if he's impressed or afraid. Bakura silently slides to the next aisle over and motions for his partner in crime to follow.

"What are you doing?" Malik hisses out between clenched teeth. "Shouldn't we be killing them? Whatever happened to Mr. I Will Crack Your Bones and Drink the Blood of My Enemies From Your Skull?"

"I highly doubt that I've ever said that, Ishtar."

"You act like a bloodthirsty maniac. I'm allowed to paraphrase occasionally."

"Whatever," Bakura sighs, scanning the barren shelves for a halfway decent box of teabags. "Anyway, we might as well let them carry on. I think it's _precious_ that the Pharaoh's little host is scrambling around and feasting on human flesh. God, this is too fucking good to be true."

"So you're saying we're _not_ going to kill them."

"No, what's the point?" he offers, snatching a box from its place, "I mean, _look _at them."

"But we still want them dead. That was our whole point, Spirit. Great Revenge and all that."

"That _was_ the point," he grinds out, keeping his voice even and crowding Malik against the wall. The shelves poke into his back. It's not very comfortable. "Our priorities have changed."

"Well, maybe _yours_ have, but I don't see why we don't still want them dead."

"They are dead, you idiot," Bakura leans even closer, and Malik swears that he will fucking freak out if he's about to be kissed against a supermarket shelf while everyone he's ever hated is within a 30 foot distance, half dead, and completely vulnerable. "They're worse than dead. Think about it. Isn't it great to know how weak they are? How easily they've succumbed to this virus? And don't you just _love_ that the Innocent Little Heroes are probably stuffing themselves to the seams with tiny sweet boys and girls? Think of all the people they've killed. Think of all the people they've _devoured._ This is poetic justice."

"I don't quite see the poetry in it."

"I suppose you wouldn't."

Malik's head is spinning. The Spirit does have a point, though. This is probably the best revenge they could've gotten. Yugi and his friends and the Pharaoh turned them into horrible bloodthirsty things, so it's only fair they return the favor.

"I wonder if Yugi still has the Puzzle on him." He can't help but think out loud.

"It doesn't really matter, does it?" Bakura asks, letting his fingers play along Malik's collarbones. "Though I suppose it would be brilliant if he still had it. Imagine the Pharaoh playing about in the mind of a psychotic flesh-hungry animal. This is too good. I could cry."

"I can't believe you've just said that. Of course it fucking matters! Can you even imagine how easy it would be for us to steal all the items now? We can everything we've ever wanted, Bakura. We can have them all dead and we can rule the world."

"The thing is, though," Bakura says, breath hot and violent against Malik's skin, "there's really no world left to rule." And he kisses him hard on the mouth.

Hot tongues slide against each other, and this is what madness tastes like. Their teeth clack and it hurts and Malik is so glad that Bakura's the only person left on the planet to watch him go completely fucking insane, because Bakura will never have any right to judge someone else's state of mind.

"C'mon then," Bakura says as he pulls away, grasping his spoils tightly in one arm and grasping Malik with the other. Their mouths are still connected by a thin line of saliva and part of Malik wants to be sick. "Let's be off."

Malik gives a nod, and they leave the store. Bakura climbs out the window first, all elegance and grace, and Malik remains for a moment. He looks again to the hungry hoard of people he used to know and grins.

A loud gunshot fires throughout the store, and Bakura whips around to see Joey Wheeler with a bullet wound straight through middle of his forehead out of the corner of his eye. "Sorry," Malik shrugs, smoking gun still in hand, "It'll make me feel better."

And Bakura smiles back at him as they run out of the store and away from the flesh-eating zombies that now have their attention. They both jump on the motorcycle and drive away, laughing maniacally into the sunset.


End file.
